DopingNews.com

ah, another day, another load of crap about doping, dopers, dope and dope enablers. wasn’t there once a thing called ‘bike racing’? remember that thing? the memory’s a bit fuzzy to be honest, but if i remember rightly it involved a bunch of guys riding around places on their bikes with the fastest one being the winner. may be that i should call myself a ‘doping fan’ from here on in, as that’s just about all i’m hearing on RadioCycling. it’s incessant, like a cyst that won’t stop oozing, sometimes it comes out in streams and sometimes in trickles but it never really stops.

and here i am to discuss more of the same – i tried to stay away from it but it pulled me back in, as though it knew where crankpunk really belongs, much like a pig in ****…

first up here on DopingNews.com is our old friend Alberto. ‘Sliperreto’, as he’s known within the peloton (it’s Spanish for slippery, if you didn’t know), has just been smacked with a 37,500 euro fine which is to go toward the cost of his recent trial before CAS – that, if you need reminding, he lost, yet only had to serve 7 months out of 2 years suspension for (good ol’ retroactive penalties). bear in mind that the agencies involved in the case demanded a total payout from El T-Bono of 455,000 euros, which means the Spaniard is paying less than a tenth of that.

you want HOW much? man that’s a lot of beef…

if that makes sense to you you’re a better mathematician than crankpunk. what happened to the money he won riding whilst awaiting his court case? anyone know? there’s things online that say Conty could be held responsible and have to return the cash, others say he should return it, but nowhere can i see that he has. but obviously he should, right?

CAS said back in February of this year that the demand by the UCI that the Clenbuterol Kid pay a whopping 2.5 million euro fine would be ruled upon “at a later stage” and yet we’ve heard nothing. i can’t help but think that these matters need to be decided before the rider in question gets back in the peloton. what’s the hold up? he raced, he doped, he got caught, get the prize money back or ban him from riding til it’s returned. too simple? probably…

next up for inspection is Tom Danielson. here’s what he had to say recently as he prepares to co-host a cycling camp somewhere in California:

“This sport has been through a lot and the riders within the sport made the decision years ago to change the sport and you guys are all writing about that now and that’s how it’s all out in the public right now. [Wrong: Travis Tygart made the decision to swim like some SuperSalmon up the rapids and to ignore threats and accusations blocking his path and it was he who busted LA’s ass and yours then had to fall too – no ‘decision’ was made by the peloton as a group to be clean – or if there was they certainly didn’t tell any of us, or Ricco, or Vino, or Valverde or etc etc…]. And the reason why the riders have changed the sport and the reason why we’re talking about it now is to make sure it never, ever happens again. [again you’re trying to obfuscate. and yes we don’t want ‘it’ to happen again, but you were one who did ‘it’, and only owned up when faced with no other choice. you and the rest who doped before joining Garmin allowed the public to believe that you were the good guys, the always clean guys, when you were not].That if your kid gets on a bike and dreams about being a professional cyclist he’ll never have to make a bad decision ever again. If he wants to be a professional cyclist he knows this is a great sport for him, great for his body, great for his family, great for his fans.

“Our sport has been through some tough times and I think that the people you’re asking the question about, the people with the suspension right now in the off-season[exactly, in the off-season when it hardly matters, and only for 6 months, so aren’t you lucky… take yourself out for a further 18 months then we will perhaps respect you], have voluntarily taken that suspension to move the sport forward and provide awesome experiences for people, for the future of cycling. [‘voluntarily’…! if you can ‘volunteer’ to take a ban when the other option is a possible federal indictment for perjury then yes, ok, you volunteered].

why are the ‘big media’ in cycling reporting stuff like this and not knocking the holes in it that are begging to be knocked? where’s the critique? the satire? now is the time to let rip. screw the platitudes, the respect, the ‘business as usual’ schtick. we are done. we are exhausted. we’ve heard this crap before. it’s David Millar 101 for crisssake…

look into my eyes, directly into my eyes, and believe everything i say!

and finally we have the news that the women’s Tour of New Zealand has been cancelled because the UCI insisted that they alone would conduct the doping tests and that they would not allow the organisers to use the much cheaper option of testing offered by the Drug Free Sport New Zealand [DFSNZ] organisation.

“The UCI won’t allow Drug Free Sport New Zealand [DFSNZ] to conduct tests in UCI events in New Zealand. This means they will send a UCI drugs inspector to New Zealand, we will have to import all testing devices from overseas, do at least 20 tests during the five days of racing, get a license to export human samples overseas, send all samples to a laboratory in Sydney to be tested all at our cost. This is approximately $30,000 per event.”

previously DFSNZ did the tests, but apparently that is no longer an option. Sandoval said that he informed the UCI that the women’s event (if you remember, the UCI’s all about supporting women’s cycling right now) would be cancelled if the UCI insisted on doing the testing – but he received no meaningful discussion on that point.

“’They don’t talk to us, they just send us documents by email,” he said.

but wait… i have an idea…. Conty owes a truckload of cash… why not ask him to pay for the testing, and knock it off his tab? perfect. anyone got his number?